tation at Birkwall's door, where
Mrs. Birkwall met them and welcomed him. He had been sufficiently
impressed with the aristocratic quiet of the vast square white old
wooden house, standing behind a high white board fence, in two acres of
gardened ground; but the fine hallway with its broad low stairway, the
stately drawing-room with its carving, the library with its panelling
and portraits, and the dining-room with its tall wainscoting, united to
give him a sense of the pride of life in old Burymouth such as the raw
splendors of the millionaire houses in New York had never imparted to
him.

"They knew how to do it, they knew how to do it!" he exclaimed, meaning
the people who had such houses built; and he said the same thing of the
other Burymouth houses which Birkwall showed him, by grace of their
owners, after the mid-day dinner, which Gaites kept calling luncheon.

"Be sure you get back in good time for _tea_," said Mrs. Birkwall for a
parting charge to her husband; and she bade Gaites, "Remember that it
_is_ tea, please; _not_ dinner;" and he was tempted to kiss his hand to
her with as much courtly gallantry as he could; for, standing under the
transom of the slender-pillared portal to watch them away, she looked
most distinctly descended from ancestors, and not merely the daughter of
a father and mother, as most women do. Gaites said as much to Birkwall,
and when they got home Birkwall repeated it to his wife, without
injuring Gaites with her. If he saw what Birkwall had meant in marrying
her, and settling down to his literary life with her in the atmosphere
of such a quiet place as Burymouth, when he might have chosen money and
unrest in New York, she on her side saw what her husband meant in liking
the shrewd, able fellow who had such a vein of gay romance in his
practicality, and such an intelligent and respectful sympathy with her
tradition and environment.

She sent and asked several of her friends to meet him at tea; and if in
that New England disproportion of the sexes which at Burymouth is
intensified almost to a pure gynocracy these friends were nearly all
women, he found them even more agreeable than if they had been nearly
all men. It seemed to him that he had never heard better talk than that
of these sequestered ladies, who were so well bred and so well read, so
humorous and so dignified, who loved to laugh and who loved to think. It
was all like something in a pleasant book, and Gaites was not altog